Zitat des Tages von Anthony Browne:
I've always felt that I was a bit of an outsider to the British children's-book illustration scene, because I don't work in line and wash.
I had just been promoted to the first rugby team. It was a perfect, wonderful coming of age. My brother was already in the team, and my father had come to watch us. We went home, and my father died in front of me. Horribly, in about half an hour. He had a heart attack.
I never want to make a child worried or afraid, and I don't think I do. My pictures are born from the belief that children are far more capable and aware of social complexities than we give them credit for.
One of my main decisions when accepting the job of Children's Laureate was that I must continue working on picture books. If I don't write and illustrate for some time, then I begin to question who I am.
M dad was a boxer, so he had this fierce, physical presence.
Having a memoir and a retrospective of your work running almost simultaneously when you're still alive does feel a bit posthumous.
Stories come to me and I don't know where they come from, but afterwards I can look back and say, 'Oh yes, that's got a little bit of me, or a little bit of my own son in it'. That's where ideas come from.
The first things I remember drawing were battles - big sheets of paper covered in terrible scenes of carnage - though when you looked closely, there were little jokes and speech bubbles and odd things going on in the background.
Inspiring passion in children for books, and the world of imagination and creativity fuelled by them, is a fundamental reason for why the Children's Laureate post exists.
One day, I found my dad's dressing-gown in an old suitcase, and it transported me back to when I was five and thought he was a god or a superhero who could do anything. After that, I wrote my first positive book about fathers, about my dad.
Worrying can be a kind of caring, and as such is a healthy part of a balanced emotional life.
My dad never decided what he wanted to do; at times he fought in the army, was a teacher, a boxer, a light engineer, and a then a publican. My mum was a traditional housewife and mother. They showed my brother and I unconditional love.
Most people lose their natural creativity at about five or six - but not me.
I grew up in Yorkshire, and once or twice a year, we'd travel over the Pennines to see my cousins in Cheshire.
The first thing I put down on paper is a storyboard, like a film director.
Writers are articulate. Artists find it more difficult.
As a boy, I devoured comics but never saw what we now describe as a picture book.
When I talk to children, I show them a typical drawing I made when I was six and point out to them that when I was their age, I didn't draw any better than any of them.
I use a little brush only for really small details. Over the years, I've started to use a much larger brush.
Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a book.
I'm impressed by the way some illustrators develop their images on computers, but it's too late for me to start, and I'm still in love with paper and paint and pencils.
I find it incredible and outrageous that public and school libraries are being forced to close - we'll all pay the price in the long term.
I don't like narrowing my readers down - there's not a particular age or gender or nationality. I suppose I'm aiming at the child I was.
What excites me about picture books is the gap between pictures and words. Sometimes the pictures can tell a slightly different story or tell more about the story, about how someone is thinking or feeling.
